Monday, July 16, 2007

What is our VISION?

What will Northgate be in the future?

We want to embody the principles of sustainability, but what is our vision for getting there?

At a recent Green Team meeting we asked ourselves what it will feel like when our vision becomes reality, from the perspective of our staff (people), our organizational structure/culture, our practices, our clients, our community, and the environment. From these perspectives we will shape the purpose of our sustainability strategy, define our vision, and learn how to get from our current to our future reality.

people - have the flexibility and energy to be creative and innovative, feel connected as a group/team/family, feel pride in "doing good"

organizational structure/culture - has 3 prongs: internal, external now (current clients/markets), external future (new clients/markets), is flexible and adaptive, understands what impacts our actions have, reaches out to the community, works toward a common goal, solves problems using a combined administrative, technological, and strategic approach

practices - external: forward-thinking and holistic, analyze resource use and environmental costs, consider long-term restoration and potential uses in all development/redevelopment projects, incorporate sustainable design whenever possible; internal: inclusive, opportunity-increasing, lead by example, "green" office practices (reduce, reuse, recycle, reclaim, refuse), move toward paperless project documentation, LEED APs

clients - fulfill regulatory and legal requirements, realize internal desire to "do what is right", increase profitability, increase marketability, improve their reputation, reduce long-term costs, reduce long-term liabilities

community - trusts us, feels inspired, knows that we value their interests, is healthy and knows that we act to protect their health, knows that we care

environment - is protected for the future, sees a real net benefit, is less competitive, sees more infilling and less sprawl, is restored

purpose - eliminate prioritizing and trade offs from the environmental impact of our actions on our receptors so that each receptor sees a benefit or a "win", have a healthy and happy work environment, be leaders, increase capital (natural, financial, intellectual, human, social, cultural) internally and externally, return blight to beauty

what would YOU add to this list?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I see a short term vision as working towards the idea of making 'green' choices over conventional choices second nature, rather than an after thought. A longer term vision would be having 'green' choices become transparent to our clients in terms of cost and timeline. We should work to get to the point where a project shouldn't take 10% longer or cost more because we need to evaluate green choices over conventional choices.